I tuned in to the first #chartership chat on Twitter last month but I missed the last two so it was great to get involved again. Tonight’s theme was the evaluative statement, and while there weren’t as many of us present this week (@joeyanne was missing and we were competing with the hottest day of the year, as @cjclib pointed out!), @tinamreynolds did a great job keeping the conversation going and the discussion was just as fast-flowing and crammed with useful tips.

@joeyanne will be archiving the tweets as usual and you can still read write-ups of the previous #chartership chats. The next chat is on 12 April at 6.30pm BST, and the theme will be the mentor/mentee relationship.

I’ve taken the approach of previous bloggers and tried to pull out the main areas we discussed, as well as the best practical tips for writing your statement.

Planning and drafting the evaluative statement

There was some debate over when to start thinking about the evaluative statement. @Misteemog collected a mass of evidence first, drew it together in the statement, writing about each item, then “pruned the best bits”. @Readyourbook suggested arranging your evidence into a coherent order first, then writing a sentence about each piece of evidence as a first draft:

Some said they’d been thinking about the evaluative statement while they were collecting evidence – @ellyob jots down ideas for the statement under each of her chartership objectives, alongside possible evidence. @tinamreynolds and @Readyourbook both wished they’d started thinking about the statement at an earlier stage. Whether or not you draft your statement as you’re going along, we all agreed it was advisable to think about the criteria as well as your PPDP goals while you’re gathering evidence.

@Readyourbook pointed out that drafting the statement can help you to focus on reflection, and to weed out evidence that doesn’t add anything to your portfolio.

What to focus on

I’ve reached the point where I want to draft my evaluative statement, but I’m struggling to set out a framework, so it was great to get some input from other chartershippers (charterers? Hmm).

@AnabelMarsh “parachuted in” to pass on some advice from a recent chartership meeting she attended. The assessors she met prefer the statement to be based on the criteria, because it makes their job easier, though they’re not opposed to other approaches. @annetteearl followed this framework, writing 250 words on each of the four criteria.

We agreed it didn’t matter if your evidence applied to more than one of the criteria – they’re bound to cross over (most activities, as @tinamreynolds pointed out, will count as commitment to CPD), and applying to multiple criteria can strengthen your evidence – although it may make writing the statement harder!

If there isn’t room for in-depth reflection in the statement, where else can you put it?

The statement is limited to 1,000 words, so there isn’t much room for proper reflection – @Schopflin repeated the mantra, “Make every word count”, and pointed out that “your statement should be supported by evidence, not contain it”. @Misteemog was advised to think of the statement as an executive summary of your application.

@johnmcmahon31 writes a reflective report on each event he attends. The portfolio I currently have on loan from CILIP (by Simon Ward) makes very good use of this – every training day and course is written up in a report, including aims and achievements, so the author is reflecting on lessons he’s learned and applied in the workplace as well as just describing the experience. The statement can then be limited to one or two lines for each objective.

The CV is another place to add reflection:

By describing your key achievements in each job role and how you applied what you learned on training courses to the workplace, you can save space in your statement. Four pages is a lot to play with; even if you’re as prolific as @tinamreynolds and have reems of training to draw on, you can add a line or two of reflection on the most useful courses if you’re selective.

@Readyourbook suggested adding some reflection to an explanatory note at the top of each piece of evidence, to make it absolutely clear to the assessors why the evidence is included.

Other issues covered

@ellyob wondered how many objectives you should identify in the PPDP – most people had four or five development areas but could bundle different objectives together under each one

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything – it’s fair to say I’m struggling to keep up with my commitments! What they call the work-life balance, or rather the work-life-CPD-everything else balance in my case.

Work has been crazy busy recently, leaving no time to tackle CPD in my lunch hour (what lunch hour?). What time I do have at the moment is taken up with work-related stuff – I’m compiling an ebook (exciting, but time-consuming!) and have a list as long as my arm of projects I don’t have time for during ‘normal’ work hours. Tweetdeck is always open and I try to keep up with industry news but at the end of every day my desktop is littered with articles I haven’t had time to read.

Attending CPD events is another area I’m struggling with. I work part-time, and with two small children and a husband who travels with work I can’t commit many evenings to networking and groups such as LIKE. It’s unfortunate that LIKE events are held on a day I don’t work, ruling them out unless I turn up late (which is more than a little embarrassing!); similarly, it’s difficult to drop in on #uklibchat or the #chartership chats while I’m getting the kids ready for bed. To say nothing of Codeyear, freelance writing, knitting…

This all sounds a bit self-pitying, and I realise I’m not alone in struggling to fit CPD into daily life, and still have a life (the Universal Bookdrop blog addressed the same issue a few days ago). I feel a bit like I’m juggling (how many cliches can I fit into one blogpost?), and by trying to keep everything in the air I’m not progressing with anything.

So, I’ve decided to cut down on blogging while I try to concentrate on compiling my Chartership portfolio. I’ll still post occasionally but no more self-imposed pressures to blog every week. Hopefully it’ll mean more quality posts, and there’s a chance I might actually finish Chartership some time this year! Less talking, more doing…

POSTSCRIPT: As is the way, I launched this last night and was directed to several related blogposts on time management this morning (thanks @librarianbyday!).

I’m also reminded of an article in the Harvard Business Review blog (When To Give Up On Your Goals – thanks @tinamreynolds!), in which Dorrie Clark discusses the importance of being realistic in setting targets, and the importance of revising or even scrapping them when they’re no longer beneficial. I tend to bumble along, trying to do everything at once. Maybe I need to take a more analytical approach.

I’ve realised some of the queries I’ve mentioned this week are vague in the extreme – I’m a bit nervous about putting too many details (names, for example) before the articles are published, not that I’ve been researching anything controversial but some journalists like to keep quiet about what they’re writing! I might come back and add links once the pieces are in print.

10am: First job of the day is to listen to the morning conference – an editorial meeting open to anyone on the paper, which they stream so you can watch on your desktop. They invite guest speakers in most weeks, and today it’s Lord Hunt, chairman of the PCC, who was at Leveson yesterday.

10am: A bit of multitasking! We’ve been asked for a detailed package on Google for one of the editors, by lunchtime, so we’ve all taken sections (it’s quicker to share a big job if there’s a tight deadline). Used Factiva to search US/global press as well as UK, then emailed the docs.

11am: Took an email query from a journalist I did some work for last week (some writers have their favourites among us!), trying to pin down the precise role of a government advisor (there’s some confusion over whether he still is one). I hit Google for some details then the text archive, for a reliable source.

12pm: Another email query, looking for profiles and background on an interview subject. Back to the text archive and Factiva!

12.45pm: …which I’ll get back to now! It’s turning into another day spent on Factiva. I don’t want to engulf someone with a deluge of articles, but when I’m researching for someone who is planning an interview I try to provide enough substantial previous profiles to give them more than one viewpoint and lots of ideas. This interview subject is a writer so I’m sending reviews of his books as well, several articles he’s written and any recent news so the interviewer is up-to-date.

2pm: Lunch!

3pm: We’ve been asked to trace a quote that is being questioned by a reader, so back to Factiva and Google.

3.15pm: A bit more work on an archive blogpost for the anniversary of the Queen’s succession to the throne in 1952, writing the bones of the article and prepping some of the images in Photoshop. I’ll have to finish it off quickly on Monday morning!

3.30pm: Picked up a journalist query from email, looking for statistics on mental health issues for girls and women (eating disorders, depression, self harm). I looked at a few charity websites, which led me to the Department of Health’s 2010-11 hospital episode statistics – the data will never be comprehensive because cases only get recognised when people enter the healthcare system, but it gives an idea of the gender and age ranges where it is most prevalent. They focused on eating disorders last year as one of their topics of interest, which is helpful. I found reports of recent surveys on body image and self harm on the text archive too, and comparative depression stats from the ONS Adult Psychiatric Morbidity study 2007.

5.15pm: It’s been a busy day today! Just enough time to read through the draft of a From the archive blogpost a colleague has written (we try to check each other’s work because the blog doesn’t go through a subbing process before we publish).

Normally that would be me done for the week – I’ve been working three days a week since I had my son four years ago – but this Friday I’m going to news:rewired so I’ll have a day off and post a few thoughts on what I learn there over the weekend.

8.45am: Caught up on Twitter on the bus in to work, and read a couple of really interesting #libday8 posts and articles (see below for links)

9.30am: I had a journalist query waiting in my inbox when I logged on – looking for a quote from Hansard (the House of Commons record). There’s an easy-to-use archive on the parliament.uk website which goes back to 1988, and there was a possible date (we like!) but it wasn’t the right one. I searched by MP on Hansard but couldn’t find the quote for that year’s session, so I checked our text archive and Google for the article referenced in the email, to see if I could gather any more info. This led me to a new date (1994), but you can’t search that far back by MP so I headed to the advanced search instead. I should have tried there first! Nothing came up when I searched for the keywords. I even whacked the quote into Google but no joy there either. I’ve asked the journalist for more information. And it seemed so simple…

10.30am: Our trainee maintains a spreadsheet of casualty figures from Afghanistan which feeds into a Datablog post on British dead and wounded. I’m responsible for updating the running total in the article and relaunching it with an amended table when wounded figures are released. The spreadsheet also includes amputation figures, released quarterly by the MoD through DASA. They’re out today, and normally our trainee Nina will just copy over the new figure and tot up the annual total, but the MoD have changed their methodology so now they’re reporting amputations by financial year. This, and the fact that they don’t report quarterly figures less than five, means our annual totals no longer tally with the official MoD numbers. I’m loathe to switch to financial year (“there were xx amputations in 2010″ is nicer journalistically than “there were xx amputations in 2010/11″) but as it stands our annual data is incomplete. I’ve added an explanatory note to the spreadsheet but I’m going to consult the Datablog editor to decide whether we should switch to the financial year rather than Jan-Dec.

11am: Still working on the Hansard query! The journalist has provided the source of the quote (a pressure group report), so I’ve got more to go on – it seems the quote may not have been said in the House. I checked Google in the first instance, and the writer thought it may have been from the Diana inquest but I can’t find it. I’ve admitted defeat and contacted the House of Commons information office.

12pm: We’ve decided to include both the Jan-Dec and financial year totals for amputations in the Datablog figures, so Nina and I amended the spreadsheet and added a note to explain discrepancies.

12.15pm: Amended the table of wounded data attached to the Datablog post on British casualties and relaunched the article.

1.30pm: Proper lunch break – there’s a charity cake sale on by the canteen today so I treated myself to a slice of cherry loaf, yum.

2.30pm: Panic over regarding the missing quote, the journalist has located it himself (a bit embarrassing!).

2.30pm: Working on From the archive, the ‘on this day’ series that we publish online (with a piece printed in Saturday’s Guardian comment pages). Found two too-long pieces for the end of Feb (Mickey Mouse in 1935 and trials of using computers in 1986) which need trimming.

4pm: Journalist query – tracking down a Guardian article from the 1990s – pulled together a few possibles from the text archive and Factiva.

4.30pm: Graphics wanted some help finding military stats for an interactive, so I borrowed the Military Balance and photocopied the relevant pages. A bit tedious but much preferable to typing it all out!

5.25pm: A quick one to finish – a PDF of an Observer spread from a fortnight ago (from the text archive).

5.30pm: Leaving on time for the first time in a long time. Sounds like a country song.

9am: Check Twitter on the bus on the way in to work, to find out what’s in the news this morning (I need to be aware of what’s going on, and it gives me an idea of what I might be asked to work on later). Work doesn’t begin when you enter the office any more!

9.45am: Deleted last week’s emails – I don’t work on Thursdays or Fridays so my inbox fills up with old queries.

10am: Picked up an emailed query for a land registry search, left over the weekend, and emailed the team to say I’m doing it (that might seem redundant – there are only six of us and we all sit together – but we work different shifts and my job share won’t pick up the email until Thursday, so it pays to attach a name to every job).

10.15am: Ran the land registry search – I haven’t used it much so it was good to get a bit of practice – and emailed results to the journalist.

10.20-11am: I’ve been running a Guardian Datablog post on the film awards season, something I initiated a few years ago, using a Google spreadsheet to track all the key nominees and winners leading to the Oscars in February. This weekend was the Directors Guild and Screen Actors Guild awards, so I added the winners to the spreadsheet and added a para about them to the article (the DGA winner usually wins the Oscar). The post has tables for best actor and actress attached, and I edited these so that the winners stood out in bold. I also created a new table, for best director nominees. Then I relaunched the post (with today’s date) and told the web team about it so they can attach the story to any relevant content.

10.30am: Michel Hazanavicius doesn’t have a keyword on the website yet, so I emailed our keyword manager to request one. He’s on it!

1pm: Checked the text for tomorrow’s From the archive piece against the original, to weed out any stray commas or spelling mistakes. This is one of the tasks that is rota’d each week.

1.15pm: Quick lunch! At my desk, because I’m going to a staff briefing at half one. I’ll try and sneak some time away from the screen later.

1.20pm: The SEO team are happy with my Bloody Sunday post so I launched it, then tweeted the link from our department account (@guardianlibrary).

1.30pm: Company-wide meeting about an upcoming Guardian event.

3pm: Took a query from a journalist about MPs prosecuted following the expenses scandal (we get most queries via phone or email but this one sidled up to my desk, which I like). I checked for each of the MPs on our text archive of national papers, and on Factiva (to catch regional coverage), and sent articles via email.

In all library roles customer service and communication skills are important. If anyone ever thought they’d become a librarian because they liked books or reading, they would be sorely disappointed if they did not also like people too.

So true! So much of the role is communicating the information you find to others.